I own a Quadro FX card that is driving an IBM T221 monitor at 3840 x
2400 and I wonder if you could think about the following for the next
Nvidia driver release.

The problem is that under Windows XP the drivers see the card outputs as
if to two monitors (not in itself a problem) and can drive the monitor
in one of two modes:-

Mode 1.

The Card outputs to a Single monitor at 3840 x 2400 @ 12Hz (I would
assume when it's doing this it's only using one of the DVI outputs from
the card). This is fine except that 12Hz is a very low refresh rate and
causes the monitor to flicker.

Mode 2.

The card outputs to the monitor as if it's two monitors using 2 x 1920 x
2400 @ 25Hz (I would assume in this mode it's using both DVI's from the
card) and the settings in Windows allow me to extend the desktop across
the 'second' monitor...using Horizontal Span it merges to appear as one
monitor and runs at 25Hz.

Here is the problem....

3D applications (for example Flight Simulator 2004) that run in
'FullScreen' mode cannot utilise Mode 2 the way the drivers are
currently configured...the reason for this is that if the application is
configured for 3840 x 2400 resolution it forces the card to go into Mode
1 above and therefore drops the frequency to 12Hz and therefore 12FPS.
If the application is configured for 2 x 1920 x 2400 mode then you can't
utilise FullScreen mode as it'll only go FullScreen on the first monitor
(and therefore not utilise the second monitor properly).

So ideally what would be perfect in the next driver release would be a
new driver mode...

Appear to be mode 1 above but work as mode 2...I'll try to describe what
I mean.

In the Windows video settings box I would ideally want an option box
that says something like "Very High Resolution Monitor in use?" and if
it's ticked I then can ONLY output to a single monitor at 3840 x 2400
(so that's what windows sees...1 Monitor) but behind the scenes the
driver at a low level is actually pushing the data out to two monitors
using both DVI's and therefore any applications can output to ONE
monitor when in fact the driver is pushing the data to TWO monitors at
25Hz. I hope this makes sense and someone reading it can understand the
problem.

To get a further insight have a look at the Matrox Parhelia driver with
specific regard to how it operates using Surround Mode..it does pretty
much what I'm asking for here in that even though you have up to three
monitors physically attached the OS sees them as 1 monitor and the
driver handles how the data is pushed.

Paul